


I'm not insulting Akko, sweetheart

by vyroj



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: F/F, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 06:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19785538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyroj/pseuds/vyroj
Summary: To defeat one’s enemy, one must first understand their enemy itself.With that in mind, decked out in all the protective gear she could afford on her fresh out of jail budget, Croix takes out an axe and goes on the worst acid trip of her life.





	I'm not insulting Akko, sweetheart

**Author's Note:**

> y'all better not slack on my man croix

She wakes up to a mouthful of red and a headful of cotton. The first thing she does is survey the room, turning her gaze towards the fading upholstery, and then towards a wide open doorway in which Atsuko Kagari stands.

In which Atsuko Kagari stands, with two prominent thumbs up and the second broadest grin Croix has ever seen. Croix tries to open her mouth to retort, but she's not sure what to retort with, and the cotton can only sit. When she blinks, Akko is gone, and Ursula is snoring into her breast.

Cotton is white, and so is Croix’s head, the fibrous strands weaving together into a wall of blankness thin enough to be paper. There's nothing written on it, though, nothing except the very texture of the wall itself, and she's too far away to see what it hides.

She's close enough to feel the drool dripping down, though, cold seeping into her collarbone, and it's this alone that motivates her to pry the woman off of her. Somehow, prying her off turns into kissing her cheek, and kissing her cheek turns into stumbling out of the room, and nothing feels revolutionary nor bad nor right.

She only takes one look back. Through the windows of the observatory, the moon smiles at her.

They don't both sit on the faded couch, on Chariot's part, because she's unsure of how close they should be, and on Croix's part, because Chariot pulls up a chair. A hastily obtained pillow offers only the barest semblance of back support to the rickety old thing, though Chariot seems just as uncomfortable, despite being in an actual cushion. Maybe they're just connected like that. Croix wonders if Chariot can taste the chicken ramen she ate this morning, and something in Chariot's cheek twitches and for a moment Croix thinks _holy shit we're telepathic_ before she realizes that the redhead's just nervous, nothing to see here.

Chariot steeples her fingers, and then folds them together again. "We should talk," she says again.

"No shit," Croix says, and then corrects herself hastily. "I mean, _I_ don't really have anything I want to talk about, but, you know. I was trying to give affirmation."

Chariot eyes haven't budged off the corner of her shoulder. "We need to talk."

"Do you need a pep talk? Because I can grab the Akko kid. I think she's like, forgiven me or something."

"Let's talk about what happened," Chariot decides, and her finger contortions grow more frantic despite her decisiveness.

"What don't you know? I gave you some Dream Fuel Spirit, and then you fucked people over, and then you didn't really because _I_ was the one who arranged it to fuck you over, and then--"

And then Chariot fell, and fell, and pulled Croix along with her, and the tumble hurt more than the landing. By the time she landed, she was already numb. The tumble, though, she had awaited with anticipation, from the moment the midwife ripped her out of the womb and frowned. And that anticipation had grown raptor still, when a stick sparked her fingertips, when childlike elation crumpled into guilt, when the words were not a will to undo but an apology for what was already done.

At the bottom, Chariot's eyes are filled with tears, and her hand is wrapped over the nape of Croix's neck. Her lips are parting, and a warmth is gushing through her hand, bright, sticky, dumping all over her white fields until they're both drenched. Through the rosy aperture, her tongue is coming up, stiffening, curving, " _Ly_

Croix knows how to drive.

She learned the moment she…

Croix wants to scream.

She's there for the books, the stacks of history and medicine that made this school any bit worthwhile. And god, _fuck_ , she wasn't supposed to have seen Chariot, hadn't even seen it fit to inform her that she was released until she had found the cure. But by some nines cursed fate (likely involving the influence of a tea blonde aristocrat) fucking _Akko_ had been there (and she wasn't supposed to have met _her_ until she found the cure either), and of course nosy Akko went and told her precious Ursula-sensei.

Croix wants to scream.

She expects a tentative figure of red, maybe even blue, a shy prod or two at her circumstances, and then a dawning silence as Chariot realizes she has no clue what she's doing, again, and Croix fails to meet expectations, again.

Instead, she just starts incessantly chattering that they needed to talk and fucking tackles Croix to the ground when she tries to leave (120 pounds should not weigh this much and jiu jitsu is a bitch).

Croix wants to scream.

She screams.

"Is that a yes?" Chariot asks.

She learned the moment she… she sat down on the stained faux leather seat and felt the wheel cup in the palm of her hand. It was warm and fuzzy.

Blue.

No, pink.

What fucking idiot would make a fuzzy steering wheel blue? Leopard print or pink, that was the rule.

She learned the moment she read the schematics of the latest suburban mom 4WD Jeep to take you to the nearest grocery store. It was easy, really. You take a roomba, and then you stand on it, and then you cross your fingers and hope to die.

She did, she means. Not you.

Chariot calls her. She wants to try it out too. Stuff like modern technology, it could inspire her, inspire her shows. Let her dance a little something in a little different way. Croix can do that. Croix can help.

All Croix wants to do is help.

Akko calls her.

Croix calls Akko.

“I can give you a ride, Akko.”

“Yeah, I’ll take that,” Chariot says, and then floats up, up, up and away, and then Akko sits down in her car in shotgun. “I don’t need a ride,” Akko says. “I have a broom.”

Croix tries to turn the ignition, but it’s stuck. When she looks back the key is gone. She left it in the restaurant.

“I’ve gotta go back,” she begs Chariot. “Please just stay there. Please don’t leave me.”

“Stop lying, Croix,” Chariot says.

“I’m not lying.”

“Then why don’t you answer me?”

"I don't deserve to. I mean it when I say tha--"

"Stop."

Croix's mouth snaps shut into an annoyed grimace.

"I don't want to hear about what you _deserve_ to feel," Chariot continues, "nor do I want to hear about what _ought_ to have happened or who was _objectively_ at fault. I think we already know that."

"Know what?" Croix asks, a defensive hawkishness entering her tone. "That it's all my issues? I'm sure you could talk all about that."

"You were just about to deprecate yourself, and now you're going off on me for it?" Chariot reminds her.

"So you _were_ \--"

"Croix."

“So you _were going to fucking_

“I have to find the keys,” Croix tells Croix. “Just let me find the keys…”

“It’s in your pocket,” Akko drawls.

“Cool.” She puts it in, and turns it, and the engine of the bus roars to life. Akko twists in her seat to look back at the dark and empty rows.

“I’m gonna call Chariot,” she says. “That should fill up the bus.”

“What are we gonna do?” Croix asks, but she can already feel the excitement the importance the consequence filling up the spaces between her ribs.

Akko’s red eyes float into view. They’re wild, stark against the gray background, flitting from contortion to contortion. “We’re gonna take it down,” she says. “I can’t wait to meet Chariot!”

“Where should I drive?” Croix asks. “Right up the big tree, the big Wagandea tree?” Her eyes must be wild too, she’s certain they are. “Or should I pick up Chariot first? I ought to pick up Chariot first. I have to take her to the vet.”

“Now let’s count our breaths,” the lightly accented and smoothly rendered voice says. “Just to ten, and then back again, in, one, out, two. If you lose track, that’s okay. Just pick up where you remember leaving off.”

“That’s easy,” Croix says, and then mentally starts:

 _One._ Her chest stutters a bit. She really needs to buy a better bra.

 _Two_. Her eyelids flutter.

“In, three, out, four.” The voice helps her along.

 _Five_.

_Six._

_Seven._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

As an adult, as an urban adult, she wears white shoes, the kind of white that not even the worst of smog may stain (at least, not in her dreams). Those white shoes have white, cotton, shoe laces.

Once, when she’s peddling her bike, the tip of her right shoelace gets caught in the shitty department store pedal joint. It keeps wrapping, and wrapping, and wrapping right around the bar, until her foot is bit and choked and crushed and dying right on that little plastic platform.

It’s not fixed gear.

All she has to do is back pedal.

All she has to do is back pedal.

 _It’s just in your mind Croix, now sit back and watch the cars_.

_Eight._

_Eight._

_Eight._

It must be cotton, must be cotton strands, wrapped tight and digging right into the folds of her brain. It’s a fixed gear bike, she can’t backpedal, how in the hell would she backpedal? She has to go on.

_Eight._

Cotton doesn’t matter, if one doesn’t care about their foot.

Or their legs.

Or their head.

Red red hair damning her to nothingness.

_Eight._

Drowsing underneath a heat radiating blanket of flesh and bone.

"Do you trust me?"

"No."

The cotton is gone.

_Eight._

Croix has never thought of red as a sullen color. Spitfire red, right? All flames, all heat, all fire. She can look down and imagine that heat yellow the dew sodden grass, tilt her head back and imagine that heat consume the open skies in purple orange red.

Jasminka pops potato chip after potato chip into her always ravenous mouth.

Croix sucks down oversalted noodles with the speed of a woman ever on the coattails of starvation.

Constanze fiddles with her latest invention, a rocket broom to the moon.

Croix fiddles with her latest invention, a rocket ship to the stars.

Amanda stretches long legs over the both of them, perfectly tailored suit offering peeks of her languid form, smooth and lightly browned skin stretched over jutting hipbones that form a picture worthy landscape of white highlights and black pockets, leaning closer, loose and sweat drenched dress shirt peeling back to reveal lean muscle, rows of half-done buttons leading up to crooked shoulders, a sultry smile played to the tune of incessant boredom, a lovely scarlet in her green eyes, peering deeper, red hair as red as red as red as

She feels sick.

_Eight_.

And then she’s retching over her own clothes, a hot dread washing up to the top of her head. She blames it on the food burning in the kitchen.

Chariot kicks open the door, takes one sniff, and pulls a pizza out from behind her back. “Delivery to the recluse, please sign here.” She offers up her lightly bandaged arm.

Croix blinks slowly. “What happened?”

Chariot smiles sheepishly. “Stage accident, the usual. Don’t fret over it.” She opens the box and makes a show of pulling out a slice, melted cheese falling away just there, beading up, slowly lowering into her mouth. “Fret over this instead,” but it’s spoken in an ugly way, through an entire mouthful of bread and sauce and mozzarella and pepperoni.

“I prefer pizza cold,” Croix murmurs.

“Sit there long enough, and it can be lukewarm.”

“Working on it.”

Chariot balances the pizza on the little table that’s supposed to be for keys and then comes over with expectant eyes.

She peers at the contents of Croix’s fidgeting hands, and finds only Croix’s own shirt, a pathetic glob of spit that will hopefully be mistaken for water soaking into its fibers.

“How do you feel?”

“I can’t speak,” Croix says, and that’s unusual, because it’s usually Chariot who can’t speak, too unfocused and lost to compose anything more than automatic answers. What do you want? Pizza. What do you want out of life? To make people smile. What do you want out of me?

Chariot tilts her head, puzzled. “You just did?”

Croix looks away, turning back towards the television screen that she’s only just remembered is there. Its volume is nearly all the way down, right in that frustrating zone where she feels as if she should be able to make out what it says but can’t actually achieve anything close. “What are you talking about?”

Chariot squints. “You said you can’t speak, but you just did.”

“Wha?” Twisting her neck makes it harder to enunciate. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you did say something,” Chariot insists.

Croix snorts derisively. “I said I wanted a slice of pizza man. You asked how I was feeling, what did you expect?”

“Oh. Um.” Chariot rocks back and forth on her heels. “Guess it’s been a long day,” she mutters to herself, and then paces back to grab the requested food. Croix wrings her shirt out against her pants, stuffs it under the waistband, wipes her hand off, and reaches for the remote.

“Turn it to sports!” Chariot calls out. “I don’t care what sports, any sports!”

Croix turns it to Discovery channel, as if that channel doesn’t discover less and less every year. Quest successful, Chariot dumps a paper plate in her lap and vaults over the couch back, thighs arranging to rest on (crush) Croix’s shins. Croix watches her quickly grow enraptured with the screen, legs fluttering and hands clutching at her knees like she’s a little kid.

“You’re a pushover, aren’t you?” Croix says.

“Hmmm?”

She reaches up and extends her fingertips, and even though Chariot should be too far away to touch, her body crumples to the floor anyways, a metallic bang sounding as the hardwood bursts underneath her elbow.

That would be the lunch tray, Croix.

Her mouth is filled with cotton.

Literally, filled uncomfortably full with wads of cotton meant to soak up the blood trickling from her newly bared gums, a couple of molars now long lost to the gutters of Paris.

Cotton also wraps her, round and round her neck, round and round her head, an orange bandage there and a spiderman band-aid here. It even fills her, clotting up an open gash in her right thigh.

“That was stupid,” a local tells her in unaccented and unbroken English. Privately, she understands that the local is a cotton peddler, even though he has yet to tell her such. “Anyways, I don’t have cotton, nor what you’re looking for, nor the magic to heal you. Thankfully, you have a phone -- can you believe that some of the geezers I find don’t? – so I’m just going to call your first contact.”

The local proceeds to do exactly what he says he will, and then holds the phone up to Croix’s ear. Chariot picks up on the first ring, even though Croix knows for a fact that at this time and day she has class.

“Yes? Croix?”

Croix stays absolutely silent, not even daring to breathe for fear that the traitorous microphone would pick up the noise.

 _Idiot_ , the local mouths.

Just take it as a fucking butt dial and hang up, Jesus, Chariot.

0:26, the call time reads.

0:27, the call time reads.

Slowly, desperately, Croix turns her cheek into the uneven bricks so that her nose is pointed away from the microphone, and then breathes in and out as slowly as she can manage. The air is half made of dust from proximity, and it’s a struggle not to choke.

“She just turned her head away,” the local chirps into the phone cheerfully. “I think it might be because her mouth is full of cotton. That type of stuff tends to get in the way of speaking, you know? A real shame. I’m a bit of an idiot for even thinking she would try to answer.”

“What’s going on?” Chariot asks, whines, even. “What’s happening?”

“Bring cotton balls,” the local says. “Lots of them.”

"I had a crush on you."

Holy shit.

"Hooooly shit, really?" Croix can't stop herself from laughing from the surprise of it. The disbelieving squalor is cut short when she catches sight of Chariot's teary eyes. "Okay, evidently I'm not taking this as seriously as I should."

Chariot gives her a watery smile. "Sorry?" She asks in a quiet voice.

"Sorry," Croix affirms. "Do you still...? Wait, no, don't answer that, fuck. Continue what you were saying."

Chariot shrugs. "You were the first person at Luna Nova who I thought believed in me, for a moment. 'A believing heart is your magic', right? You were my first... friend."

They both wince.

"That first night... I spent a lot of time thinking about why. Even before you talked to me, I'd seen you in class. Not only did you utterly outclass me, everybody loved you. And the best part was, you didn't even care."

"I did."

"I couldn't tell," Chariot says. "So it didn't really matter. Anyways, I decided you hated me and gave up on anything else on the first night."

"...But we were friends, weren't we?"

Chariot turns her sharp gaze onto Croix. "I treasured every second that we spent together. I wouldn't have traded it for anything else."

"You just didn't think the same was true of me."

Her silence is answer enough.

"Is that why we didn't talk about the Claiomh Solais? Because you didn't think there was anything to fix?"

Chariot gives her a bewildered face. "What do you mean we didn't talk about the Claiomh Solais?"

"We didn't... Well. Yeah. We did. Nevermind."

"I told you how bad I felt? And you told me it was okay," Chariot reminds her.

"I know, I know, nevermind."

Chariot accepts this for a narrow-eyed period, until Croix shifts (and she swears it's just because her ass is getting numb) and Chariot's face grows twisted. "Is this supposed to be some kind of roundabout signal? That you want me to press on it?"

"What? No! Just drop it, Chariot."

But Chariot is already rapidly growing bitter. "That's what you told me last time, but clearly you expected something different."

"Fuck, it was a mistake, okay? Just fucking drop it, I said nevermind."

"Tell me what you meant, then. What did you want?"

"Obviously not anything I communicated."

They're both snarling, and Croix had forgotten how sharp Chariot's face could get when she was upset, all her skin and muscle pulled flat along her cheekbones.

"Well then communicate it _now_!"

"Why does this matter so much? Obviously I was in the wrong again, because we objectively did talk about the Claiomh Solais."

"Because I want to know what you _want_ , Croix. Becase I never do."

"Of course you don't! You were convinced that I somehow _hated_ you. I just wanted some fucking companionship, not a guilt trip!"

"You just wanted some fucking companionship," Chariot repeated mockingly.

"Oh, so _now_ you're mad?"

"You told me you thought I was a _pet_ \--"

Take her to the vet Croix take her to the vet Croix she’s fucking sick _take her to the vet Croix_

"--like a minute ago. And, no--," Chariot shoves her hand under her jaw, "--shut your-- let me finish. _That_ isn't even what I'm mad about. We'll talk about that when _I've_ finished processing it and bring it up; don't try and attribute my words to a separate topic."

Croix pulls away from her hand with a glare. "Then what do you fucking want?"

Chariot laughs. "What you just asked, with less vulgarities." Croix rolls her eyes. "What do you want from me?"

"I wanted you to read my fucking mind," Croix says, pushing her hand out of the way to lean closer to her face. "Or maybe, I dunno, my face? Because you getting the Chaiomh Solais, and you shirking that to go tool around 'making people happy', _hurt me_. I mean, look at Akko. Remember Cavendish, with the bitch family? Remember her saying she wanted to leave? Remember Akko dragging her back days later anyways? Yet when it was us, you dropped me like a hot rock because you were so scared that Croix-senpai would hurt you."

"You can't just pin this on me! You _told_ me things were okay. You don't know what was going through my head."

"But I _think_ I do, and guess the fuck what, that's how perception works. That's why I didn't want to talk about this, but _you_ just had to make it happen. Also, can I just point out the utter hypocrisy of you criticizing _me_ for not being transparent, when you were apparently convinced I hated you for years and never said anything?"

"Yeah, I'm making this happen. Isn't that what you wanted? For me to be more like _Akko_?"

"Oh my god, don't tell me you're jealous of your 16-year-old pick-me-up."

"Don't talk about Akko that way."

"I'm not insulting Akko, sweetheart."

Chariot grimaces. "Why are you like this? Why are you making every step of this so hard? You don't have to say stuff like that."

"And yet I do," Croix says, smirking.

"This isn't how I wanted this conversation to go."

"And yet it goes."

"Croix. Please. Don't."

"Don't what?"

They lie staring up at the stars, blue skirts sodden with residual rain water.

"I love you," and this time the place is right, and the moment is right, and the ink is wet. The pen touches the cotton paper, and as its nub drags its ink trickles down into sweeping strokes of black on white. But the trickling grows faster and faster and the strokes grow sloppier and sloppier until the ink is gushing out, and Croix realizes that the cotton was never white in the first place, and that the lines don't shape anything at all.

"I know," she responds. "I love you too."

Chariot doesn't apologize, just bends her head down to her arms and gives Croix the okay to continue. In what she doesn't specify.

Croix kind of knows, though, so she sucks it up and tries to dredge through what being 16 was like.

Boring, lonely, and loaded with expectations, mostly. Loaded with unimportant expectations, at that, hordes of geezers blind to the greater potential of magitronics and stubbornly insistent on wand work. Not that she couldn't play along, but it was a relief to leave. The other students were really boring, too. Croix honestly didn't know how that kid, Cavendish, could handle all the sycophants, but kudos to her. Then again, not _everyone_ was a suck up. There was that one kid, Olive, who actually seemed kind of genuine. Well, maybe. Lots of people _seemed_ genuine. That didn't mean they were actually. Probably.

"I wasn't very good at socializing," Croix concludes.

The corner of Chariot's mouth rises.

"But I still wanted... someone? And then I met you."

"And? What was 'me'?"

Croix grimaces. "You're not going to like this."

"I know."

Silence reigns for another few moments. Croix yanks a hand through her hair and tries and fails to come up with something different to say, but... Fuck, she fucking asked, didn't she?

"...fuck. I'm a pretty shitty person, aren't I?"

Chariot's still smiling, but it's stiff and pained and knowing. "You hated me," the woman concludes for her.

"What?" Croix mutters distractedly. "No, of course not," and she's already internally moving on from the idea when she catches sight of Chariot's too wide red eyes. "...did I give off that impression?"

"I..." Chariot's mouth moves stiffly for a few moments. "No, nevermind. Continue what you were saying."

"Did you mean after the Claiomh Solais? Because yeah, I kinda did after that, but I was thinking more about before."

"No... I mean, yes. Just, nevermind. Let's move on."

Croix scrutinizes Chariot's suspiciously guilty expression, but lets the topic go by request. "I thought you were below me. In like, a really shitty I am above everyone else kinda way, like you were just inferior to me somehow. I took comfort in it," she admits in a rush.

Chariot just kinda stares.

"It was an inevitability, given my combination of pride and anxiety. I couldn't handle talking with people as equals, because I didn't know how to connect with people. But I was lonely, so I ended up just figuring out that I didn't have to be anxious about befriending people if they weren't equals. And then you came along, and you were this blundering little first year that everybody hated, and I figured I could just wow you with all my wisdom and smarts until you were basically my pet."

"You always said you hated sycophants."

Croix flushes. "I didn't hate them kissing up to me, I hated the fact that they were faking it and probably laughing behind my back."

Silence.

She coughs. "Uh, that is to say. In my defense. None of that was a _conscious_ decision. It's just looking back that I see that now. And," another cough, "Things _changed_ , you know. I don't think of you like that anymore."

"Not after the Missile Crisis?"

"Not after you nearly set the school on fire just to get me to smile."

Oddly, Chariot seems more disturbed by that sentence than any of the previous, but Croix plunges on. "The more time I spent with you, the more I developed an... affection. A respect for what you could accomplish as an equal. In the end, I still categorized you as weak," she admits with a tone of regret, "which was why I was so resentful of the Claiomh Solais."

"I thought you just wanted to restore magic."

Croix chuckled. "Would I really have been so upset? We got six of the words in less than a year, the world could stand to wait for the seventh. No, I wanted to _be_ the one to restore magic. Trust me, I've had more than enough time for self-reflection. I wanted to be the one holding the Claiomh Solais, and seeing you, somebody I had categorized as a _pet_ , get it instead, while I couldn't even touch the damn thing... Not to mention that you looked so happy performing. It was like you were getting everything you could ever want, and I was getting, what, a thank you? I was _better_ than that.”

Chariot says absolutely nothing, and Croix gives her a smile. A genuine one, one with sunny eyes and white yellow teeth.

“I was better than that.”

In hindsight, it’s a beautiful view, even if nobody can reach its summit. Maybe that’s _why_ it’s a beautiful view, even with all the beaten bark and ominous thorns. Because no matter what, you can always go higher, you can always try harder, a poison wrapped gift that never stops giving.

The cursed pollen is, of course, long gone, glowing flowers shriveled into hardened spikes (it’s creepy how the tree does that like no other tree does, how even its beauty becomes deadly, how the layers upon layers of aged thorns already existing reminds Croix of the endless grief this tree must have already caused)

When she gets high enough, she sets her roomba (her favorite, this one, not the fastest but has been with her through thick and thin) down in the most open space she can find, and then commands her army of less favorite roombas to follow suit, offloading an assortment of gadgets ranging from mood rings (as in, literal litmus detection of fuel spirit) to building sized diagnostic machines. She then selects a thorn, a large roiling one long past its sins, hopefully aged long enough that those sins have lost their poignancy.

To defeat one’s enemy, one must first understand their enemy itself.

With that in mind, decked out in all the protective gear she could afford on her fresh out of jail budget, Croix takes out an axe and goes on the worst acid trip of her life.

“Hey,” Chariot whispers, running her thumb over Croix’s knuckles. “Are you awake now?” Her voice has that flat tone of somebody who has asked that question many times without response, so Croix revels in the surprised look she receives when she sits straight up, looks Chariot directly in the eyes, and says the words that had been hanging in her throat for the course of a decade.

“You were my pet. My dog, my cat, my lover, someone who gave affection freely and only asked for lies in return.”

Chariot stares.

“I’ve told you this before,” Croix states.

Chariot stares.

“I’ve told you this before, but I can tell you again.” Croix runs her hands over her arms, and then her legs, feeling the needle (IV? Saline?) that pricks her and the gown that covers her ruined body. “For as long as you’re still sick, I can tell you again. I don’t think you understand when I tell you.”

She tugs at the needle. Chariot gently stops her. “I hated you. I hate you. I hate you Chariot, why are you still sick, why won’t you heal, why won’t you _go to the vet with me?_ ”

“If you cry,” Chariot offers. “You might feel better.”

“You’re right,” Ursula says, “Pizza is best cold.”

“That’s lukewarm,” Croix corrects, shuffling her legs underneath the other woman’s weight. “You’re not even getting the full experience.”

Ursula groans, tilting her head back against the cushion. “I know, right? I don’t think I’ve ever had pizza not hot before now.”

Croix raises an eyebrow. “Never? Ever? You’ve never eaten leftover pizza.”

Ursula scoffs. “Who the hell leaves leftover pizza?”

“I can’t cry,” Croix protests.

“You’re crying right now.”

Croix keeps on looking into Chariot’s eyes, blinking away the falling tears at a desperate pace.

“Go on,” Chariot soothes her. “Let it out. You’ve always kept too much bottled up.”

“It’s my fault,” Croix sobs. “I don’t see why I can’t heal you. I just want to help. Why won’t you let me?”

Croix raises the other eyebrow.

“Oh, shut up,” Ursula says, poking her cheek. “Like I’m going to take health advice from someone who’s food pyramid is comprised entirely of instant noodles.”

“That food pyramid is out of date, anyways, isn’t it?” Croix points out.

Ursurla snorts. “I highly doubt they’re going to decide to adopt yours as the replacement, but you’re welcome to try.”

“Don’t underestimate me.”

Ursula sets her crust aside, the heathen, and then flops down on Croix’s front, giggling at the strangled wheeze that that produces. “Oh, I’d never.”

“If I could press charges for being pissed off,” Croix grits out. “I’d be 20 bucks goddamn richer.”

“20 dollars,” Ursula echoes. “What a fortune.”

Careful to avoid the assortment of bandages protecting Croix’s ruined face, Chariot cradles her head. “As humans, as people, we all harm other people, Croix. People all harm, and people all are harmed, and sometimes people stay together and sometimes they stay apart, and sometimes staying together hurts people, and sometimes staying apart hurts people, and sometimes people just hurt and people are hurt no matter what way the wheel turns. Do you know what the most important thing to remember is, in between all of that?”

“What?” Croix asks.

“No matter what, we all stay individuals.”

“You’re trying to leave me,” Croix whispers, the revelation crawling up her neck and needling her scalp.

“Individually capable,” Chariot says, “and individually responsible.”

“I love you,” Croix begs.

“I see,” Chariot says. “I see, but I think you should take a better look at my eyes.”

Then she shifts a little bit, so she isn’t resting literally on Croix’s diaphragm. “You know,” Ursula says, “I had seven drinks before you came in.”

“Jesus.”

“Want to catch up?”

Croix rapidly shakes her head. “Alcohol never rests well with me.”

“Oh. Was that twitching incident not a one-time thing?”

Croix tilts her head into her neck and shrugs.

“Alright,” Ursula says. “That’s fine. I don’t know if I have seven drinks left anyways.”

Croix does, squinting, her clear direct gaze suddenly seeming a lot less clear and direct. “Your eyes are blue,” she notes.

Mistress Holbrooke smiles at her. Croix is too exhausted to feel embarrassed, but she does feel a bare hint of defensiveness when confronted with Holbrooke’s knowing look.

“Croix,” Holbrooke says, “Do you think revenge is worth it?”

“No,” Croix replies immediately, memories of late nights and late mornings and sleeplessness and empty food weighing down her stomach.

“Are you going to have more?”

Ursula runs her fingers over Croix’s jaw and then runs her nails over Croix’s chapped bottom lip. Her eyes are numb, blank, and empty.

“Do you think revenge undoes that which has been done?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” she chants, memories of angry red cubes and teary red eyes weighing down her heart.

“No,” Ursula says. “I won’t.”

Alcohol, Croix thinks, only ever makes liars out of people.

Holbrooke squeezes her hand, whispers a quiet “breathe, Croix,” and Croix breathes.

But, she also thinks, as her eyelids slowly begin to fall, she’s actually quite okay with that.

“Sometimes I wonder, Croix,” Holbrooke says, “If revenge and atonement are really all that different.”

Lies always run out, after all.


End file.
